AIBU to want teachers to stop buying resources out of their own pockets.

[washandrepeat]

For years I've read about teachers having to pay for their own photocopying once the budget has been used up plus other resources. Now I am reading that some teachers are having to purchase their own soap and sanitisers for their classes as the budgets won't stretch.

We seem to be one of the only nations, not funding schools to deal with the pandemic. We also seem to have some of the biggest class sizes in Europe, especially compared to the wealthiest European nations. Since when did we accept this for our children? 21 is the average in OECD countries, 23 in France and 21 in Germany. These are some of the reasons why school there can go back with social distancing. Why do we put up with this as if we can do not better?

Why are property developers allowed to build hundreds of new properties in an area without a whiff of new schools to provide for the growing population in these areas?

This isn't a debate about should schools open or not or a teacher-bashing thread if anything this pandemic has shown how we never stand alongside the teachers. Perhaps if we'd listened in the past we might not be in the current situation.

AIBU to want the teachers to stop spending their own money to pay for the Governments failings and for Head Teachers to support them in doing this.

YANBU.

It's like the meme that does the rounds from time to time...'Teaching, the only job where you steal thinks from home to take to work.'

I have even taken printer paper in because I knew the school had run out and needed to print off work for my lessons.

I had to use my petrol to deliver work packs because school couldn't afford to pay for postage (I actually paid postage for a couple of children who were out of the catchment area because they lived so far in the opposite direction it worked out cheaper that way).

Sometimes it is for the 'extras' e.g. fun lessons, rewards, class displays etc (e.g. buying pots to keep pens in on each table) but more and more frequently it is for the basics.

I find the uk really strange here - kids get everything provided, and the teacher pays? How strange.
In all countries I lived previously, parents bought stationary, craft supplies and pens etc, so much less was on school budget (only photocopies, exam papers, teacher classroom supplies). Books were generally borrowed from school, and returned at the end if the year (and parents had to pay for replacement if books were damaged).

*steal things not thinks. Doh!

kids get everything provided, and the teacher pays?

No the parents are supposed to pay.
The parents fail to provide for their children
Or the children borrow items and destroy them

Class supplies like coloured pencils and white board markers are supposed to be funded by budgets

I think a lot of parents don't often realise just how much teacher provide themselves.

A lot of people laughed at me when I suggested that instead of 28 £2 mugs and £3 boxes of chocolates we could all chip together and get a nice box of chocolates and a box of gluesticks/scissors/something the teacher needed. Then a one of them made a snide comment mentioned it to the teacher and she said she'd be delighted by that. She told them just how much she spent each year on essentials.

The PTA also make two annual donations to each class to try and ease the costs on teachers.

In France parents have to provide exercise books, pens, pencils etc from primary age.
Also, not quite on the point, but whereas primary class sizes are generally around 23-25, my son was in a class of 36 for his last two years of school- A level standard.

The parents fail to provide for their children
Or the children borrow items and destroy them
Experience from other countries:
If the parents fail to supply, the kids don’t have the item, the end. (except for genuine extremely poor families, who could get a grant from school), and would get an angry letter home, and social services later down.
If kids destroy items, parents get a bill. Kid doesn’t get an item again, and has to go without. Then see above.

A friend with a DD in Reception asked advice on what to get the teacher for Christmas. I said, repeatedly, stationery! She wasn't convinced, which surprised me, as she works in the NHS (although at least there you can get medical sales reps to give you pens and post its).

I have really cut down on the last few years on buying things for the classroom so have struggled along for months with no glue sticks - actually none in the cupboard to replenish class supplies with and told none being ordered until after April - no art equipment like poster paint, clay, watercolours, enough brushes etc., no topic resources like history costumes and pretend artefacts and the like, and so on and so on.

The kind of lessons I want to teach are impossible to provide unless I spend my own money. When you go to the resources cupboard and realise that all that's in there are some old books about the Victorians, you face a struggle to make lessons engaging and interactive.

No wonder I have probably easily spent at least £5,000 in the last decade.

@Sophiafour
With a very few honorable exceptions, over the years I've observed that the richer someone is the more likely they are to demand freebies/preferential treatment and prices.

I've worked in a range of schools in a variety of areas. When I worked in an area of the highest deprivation, I never had a parent who didn't pay in full for a school trip. In contrast, when I taught in a MC "naice" area, I had several parents in each year group who refused to contribute to trips because they knew they "didn't have to".

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale

Honestly I wish everyone would stop subsidising their employers. Stop working through your lunchbreak. Stop working unpaid overtime. Stop excessively covering other colleagues' work when they are long term sick. Stop buying stuff. NONE of these things are the responsibility of the employee. They are all the result of pisspoor management and underfunding, but we dont know the extent of the problem because it is hidden by well meaning employees covering everything up.

Absolutely right!

@Iamnotthe1 similar experience with parents at my DS’s Primary School

[quote ineedaholidaynow]@Iamnotthe1 similar experience with parents at my DS’s Primary School[/quote]
The difference does transfer to the children too in terms of how they value or look after anything given to them by the school or teacher.

I think there's a difference between buying something for a kid you know can't afford it, and paying for things the whole class needs.

One seems like kindness, the other seems like teacher is being exploited by the system.

I also wish teachers wouldn't subsidise and just tell parents bluntly that X can't happen due to budget issues.

@labyrinthloafer
I also wish teachers wouldn't subsidise and just tell parents bluntly that X can't happen due to budget issues.

It can be basic-level things though: maths resources to support learning; books to be able to teach reading; whiteboard pens to be able to actually demonstrate to the children what you want them to understand.

It varies from school to school. My current one is very good at identifying and using income streams (hiring out spaces, teachers working as SLEs, etc.) so we get enough in our initial class budgets but only if you spend it sensibly and the children look after things.

Not a teacher myself but I can remember my form tutor constantly lending out money to people in the class. Every Friday she’d read out a list of who owed what (this was in the nineties) It might only be 20p here and 50p there but in a class of 28 ish it added up. I highly doubt she got it all back either. This was for lunch money otherwise people would have gone without.

[quote Iamnotthe1]@Sophiafour
With a very few honorable exceptions, over the years I've observed that the richer someone is the more likely they are to demand freebies/preferential treatment and prices.

I've worked in a range of schools in a variety of areas. When I worked in an area of the highest deprivation, I never had a parent who didn't pay in full for a school trip. In contrast, when I taught in a MC "naice" area, I had several parents in each year group who refused to contribute to trips because they knew they "didn't have to".[/quote]
Similar in the ASC and Playscheme I run. The people with the least are never the ones that need chased up for payments.

agree and disagree. the government expenses comparison is bang on.

my own DM was a teacher a long time ago and the amount of wasteful spending (and stuff going home) every year was outrageous. We argued a lot about it, she argued that if they didn’t spend their budgets those budgets were cut the following year. It was criminal IMO. seeing a whole D Sci. department cleared out of new equipment by staff or to landfill because they bought new to keep their budgets was a last straw for me. No I’m not making this up. selfish arseholes with no conscience or real accountability for taxpayers money the lot of them. I think what we see now is a direct result of that, the govt clearly cottoned on to the wasteful piss taking of the April budgets.

call me a subversive nutjob but I think its time for a system of charging parents a consumables fee and then schools using that fee for consumables.

Parents complain about costs (uniform, bus fares) so its just something else to moan about but consumables are part of that expense too, most parents send their DC to school with stuff in a pencil case. schools have much greater buying power so it would/should work cheaper for parents in the long run. School isn’t compulsory, educating your DC is, so why should teachers have to pay for any part of that out of their own pockets? or risk ‘competence’ issues if they don’t?

I live in the Netherlands and DD has 27 other kids in her class, the same as in her last year of primary. She is supposed to be going back to school full time in September.

I get that you’re trying to make a point but bullshit comparisons don’t help but yes teachers shouldn’t be putting their hands in their pockets.

Another issue is the often archaic procurement system in schools. I will quite often buy stuff like laminating pouches online where I can get them for a quarter of the price that our preferred supplier charges so that I can save my meagre stationery budget for other stuff.

@AgentJohnson are they going back as normal or with any restrictions?

My school was brilliant and provided/bough a lot of things for the children's and staff's safety and to be able to operate as close to normal as possible.(we had nearly all the year groups in)

Then the LA found a loophole (they also use loopholes for SEN funding ) and we're getting fuck all money back, so our budget was fucked.

Fun times.

It says everything that our schools budgets locally are only not going to be totally fucked because of a very generous local business who have donated sanatiser stations and a fuck-tonne of hand sanitiser to the 3 primary schools and the high school.

An ex pupil has donated filled pencil cases to the primary that DS and DD attend for all pupils.

Without that school budgets would be destroyed

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale

Honestly I wish everyone would stop subsidising their employers. Stop working through your lunchbreak. Stop working unpaid overtime. Stop excessively covering other colleagues' work when they are long term sick. Stop buying stuff. NONE of these things are the responsibility of the employee. They are all the result of pisspoor management and underfunding, but we dont know the extent of the problem because it is hidden by well meaning employees covering everything up.

This can't be said too often or too loudly, along with 'join a Union'.

@notasportymum

agree and disagree. the government expenses comparison is bang on.

my own DM was a teacher a long time ago and the amount of wasteful spending (and stuff going home) every year was outrageous. We argued a lot about it, she argued that if they didn’t spend their budgets those budgets were cut the following year. It was criminal IMO. seeing a whole D Sci. department cleared out of new equipment by staff or to landfill because they bought new to keep their budgets was a last straw for me. No I’m not making this up. selfish arseholes with no conscience or real accountability for taxpayers money the lot of them. I think what we see now is a direct result of that, the govt clearly cottoned on to the wasteful piss taking of the April budgets.

call me a subversive nutjob but I think its time for a system of charging parents a consumables fee and then schools using that fee for consumables.

Parents complain about costs (uniform, bus fares) so its just something else to moan about but consumables are part of that expense too, most parents send their DC to school with stuff in a pencil case. schools have much greater buying power so it would/should work cheaper for parents in the long run. School isn’t compulsory, educating your DC is, so why should teachers have to pay for any part of that out of their own pockets? or risk ‘competence’ issues if they don’t?

And yet, where did the imperative to spend your entire budget or lose it come from but the Government? It would make so much more sense to allow schools, councils and so on to save unneeded funds year on year, for situations like Covid, for increasing social care needs, for re-development and so on. Instead they are actively penalised for not being wasteful.

On a personal note, the amount of unnecessary roadworks that go on in this Borough when April looms cost a lot of money that's desperately needed to maintain even the sub-standard social care we have now. I'm sure that's true all over.